Thursday, 24 May 2012

Salyut Space Station

The Salyut (Salute) program was the first space station program
undertaken by the Soviet Union, which consisted of a series of nine
single-module space stations launched over a period of eleven years from
1971 to 1982. Intended as a project to carry out long-term research
into the problems of living in space and a variety of astronomical,
biological and Earth-resources experiments, the program allowed space
station technology to evolve from the engineering development stage to
long-term research outposts in space. Ultimately, experience gained from
the Salyut stations went on to pave the way for multimodular space
stations such as Mir and the International Space Station, with each of
those stations possessing a Salyut-derived core module at its heart.
The program consisted of a series of six scientific research
stations (DOS-type) and three military reconnaissance stations
(OPS-type) launched as part of the highly secretive Almaz program, and
during its development saw a number of spaceflight records broken,
including several mission duration records, the first ever orbital
handover of a space station from one crew to another, longest stay in
space by a woman and various spacewalk records. By the time the program
concluded in 1991, it had seen space station technology evolve from
basic, single-docking port stations to complex, multi-ported orbital
outposts with impressive scientific capabilities, whose technological
legacy continues to the present day.